Basic Trope: Characters believe in a conspiracy against them and are proven correct even though most people don't believe them.
- Straight: Bob believes The Government is spying on him. His friends call him paranoid, but what he's saying is true.
- Exaggerated: Bob believes everything from cars slowing down in front of his house, a picture slightly crooked, radio and television static, to the odd behaviour of telephone line repairmen, are all signs of various government agencies spying on him. Not only is he totally correct, but he is only scratching the surface of how deep the conspiracy goes.
- Downplayed:
- Bob knows the government has a spy program. Most other people know about it, albeit to a lesser extent than he.
- Bob turns out to be correct about the spy program, but thinks the spies are more dangerous or damaging than they are.
- Justified:
- The government went after Bob because he knows about the country's war crimes.
- No one believes Bob because he seems crazy, but learning (even learning of) the secrets is what made him crazy in the first place.
- Bob's claims are dismissed due to his history of Crying Wolf.
- Inverted:
- The government is paranoid of the seemingly average citizen, Bob. As it turns out, he is secretly plotting to Take Over the World, but the public is not to know this information.
- Bob is the only person who blithely believes nothing is wrong, when everyone else around him is convinced that the government is spying on them. He's right; the government really isn't up to anything.
- Bob is the only person who believes nothing is wrong, when everyone else is convinced that the government is spying on them. He's later proved wrong, to his chagrin.
- Subverted:
- Bob is a Conspiracy Theorist and a crackpot. The government is not after him.
- The existence of numerous conspiracies makes it possible that Bob's claims might be true, but it turns out he is so focused on his imaginary conspiracies that he knows nothing of the real ones. The government is subtly using him to discredit people who do know what's going on.
- An event repeatedly occurs to Bob, and he gets paranoid about that event, but one day the event stops happening.
- Double Subverted:
- But he denounces the government often and audibly enough that they decide to try to silence him anyway "just in case".
- Bob publishes his wildly over-the-top theories to the masses, while subtly slipping the real information to the few people he thinks he can trust.
- Parodied:
- Bob reveals a conspiracy involving a cat food company placing catnip in its food to make it more addictive to cats. It's true, so the cat food company tries to "poison" him with catnip.
- Bob points out blatant evidence that the government is hiding things over and above what most people consider legitimate national security grounds, but nobody pays any attention to him.
- Even after the government declassifies information and Bob's claims are vindicated, he's still dismissed as a nutcase.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Bob's claims are false, but as he digs for evidence that doesn't exist, he stumbles upon a real conspiracy and tries to reveal that to other members of the public, who don't believe him until a government drone blows up his apartment.
- Bob's paranoid theories vary wildly from totally false to completely correct and all points in between.
- Sometimes Bob frets about what (he thinks) the government is plotting; other times the government worries about what (it thinks) Bob is plotting.
- Averted:
- Bob is just crazy and his suppositions of nefarious happenings are wrong.
- Bob doesn't claim anything shady is happening, and the possibility of such is not explored.
- Enforced: The writers want to show how sometimes, people are not as crazy as they seem and there could be some truth to what they say.
- Lampshaded: "I'm not paranoid if I'm right."
- Invoked: Bob takes it upon himself to find out about the government conspiracies to prove he isn't just paranoid.
- Exploited: The government knows Bob is too eccentric to believe, that the truth is too strange to believe, or both and allows Bob to know what's going on.
- Defied:
- The conspiracy goes to great lengths to conceal evidence and leaves Bob alone. He may eventually kill himself in a Paranoia Gambit or just end up in prison, but he will never have evidence that he is right.
- Alice, a high-ranking government agent, breaks her oath of secrecy for the sake of her conscience and tells Bob everything about what he wants to know.
- Discussed: "Y'know, I'm beginning to wonder if Bob has a reason to be paranoid."
- Conversed: "That character knows about the conspiracy but no one will believe him."
- Implied: Bob always goes off on rants about the government spying on him but the characters ignore it ... until one of them catches a glimpse of a man in a dark suit following him and quickly disappearing around the corner.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's claims are true, but he is a very eccentric person who has been known to make wild claims in the past, so it's natural most people don't believe him.
- Improperly Paranoid: However much truth there is to Bob's claims, the fact he decides to jump the gun for the sake of "safety" is what, in one way or another, brings about his doom.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob develops his social skills and reveals evidence of government spying calmly, allowing people to believe him.
- Bob only takes reasonable and/or subtle precautions so nobody thinks he's a crackpot jumping the gun, and also so he doesn't tip his hand to his secretive enemies.
- Played for Laughs: Bob claims the government is out to kill him but the others don't believe him. After a government drone chases them down the street, he gets up and proudly tells them, "I told you so!"
- Played for Drama:
- Bob's warnings fall on deaf ears and the government gets away with its crimes.
- Bob isn't pleased that nobody listened to him, and when he's finally proven right, everybody rushes to him for help. But he refuses out of spite, leaving them all for themselves to fight back without any clue about how.
- King Bob's paranoia creates a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Nobody was plotting against him before. However, when he started his crazed inquests on perfectly innocent things that were several steps removed from being remotely suspicious, his court began to plot against him, both for their own safety and to save the kingdom from him becoming The Caligula.
- Played for Horror: Bob claims the government facility just outside of town is where its reserve of Sociopathic Soldiers is based. He's eventually proven right when they break out and literally crucify everybody in the town.
- Plotted a Good Waste: Bob is written as crazy in a production Very Loosely Based on a True Story about a notable whistleblower.
Go back to Properly Paranoid before they see you!
